


Surrender

by landofspices



Series: Only Our Dark Does Lighten: canon-based episode tags [7]
Category: Robin Hood (BBC 2006)
Genre: Afterlife, Angst, Bilingual Character(s), Canon Compliant, Canonical Character Death, Despair, Episode Related, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Suicide, Missing Scene, Redemption, References to the Child Ballads, Roman Catholicism, doctrine? what doctrine?, poor Gisborne siblings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-25
Updated: 2016-05-25
Packaged: 2018-06-10 18:13:45
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,436
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6968476
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/landofspices/pseuds/landofspices
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>From an aesthetic perspective, I totally understand why Robin is the only one we get to see being met in the afterlife. From a "rabid Guy fan" perspective, it hurts so much! I hereby offer this considerably expanded version of, ahem, a certain scene from 3.13. </p><p>
  <b>Major Character Death.</b>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	Surrender

**Author's Note:**

> Takes place in the same universe as all my other episode-related stories, but refers to the Vaisey/Guy relationship only in passing. It makes most sense if read with that relationship in mind, but if you've skipped the others because they're more graphic, this can still be read without them.

“The light is changing. Surrender this loveliness  
you cannot make me do. _But_ I will. Yes.”

— John Berryman, 'Homage to Mistress Bradstreet'.

 

Often enough has Robin given him a cut lip, a loosened tooth. Blood in his mouth. Salt, iron, fear. And this is altogether different: viscous and thick. I’m not ready, he thinks. It’s taken all his life to learn to trust. You wouldn’t think those same hands, which split his lip, could be so gentle as they’ve suddenly become.

Archer. Fare thee well, my brother. I shall never see thee more.

The pain creeps up and down on its white mouse feet. He’s never been as cold as he is now. Robin — and he’s sure of this, without knowing why — will not leave him. Oh, Robin. I didn’t think anyone would be kind like this. Let alone you. Don’t you want to go away, and at least let me be bitterly afraid, for as long as it takes? That I deserve.

His eyes are full of tears and he can’t see Robin’s face. Getting the words out is difficult, but he keeps trying. Now is the time to resign her at last. My love is ashes. My life is burnt out. I’m sorry, Robin, I’m sorry. There’s much more to say than he has the breath to compass.

For the blade I bore. For the vial I gave. I’m not asking any forgiveness. Robin’s warm hand cups his arm, strokes his cheek. It’s not the sort of touch he’s used to. No hunger in it, only gentleness. Bonny sweet Robin. His breath feels thin and slow and hard to come by. Robin’s fingers touch his temple, his cheek, the side of his eye where a heavy tear has gathered. Take it, Robin. I haven’t paid you anything worth having. This is my last and least.

The blood is pooling in his clothes. Oh, he will never see his horse again, never ride her: he’d thought to steal her back one day. Isabella doesn’t deserve her. Pain wrings his neck like that of an infant animal deemed useless. He gasps, and Robin gentles him.

No hiding from this. It’s like the flame, it will take everything.

He wants to tell Robin what he has salvaged. I’m a man of rags, he wants to say: I don’t know how to be anything else. I’m only pretending. Why did you take me in? You’ve never told me. Why didn’t you give me back to him? I would have given me back. There’s no breath to say it. The pain narrows his throat.

His bladder empties suddenly, a hot wet patch in his clothes. He’s ashamed: in front of Robin, in Robin’s arms. They are as close as any two people can be, who are not lovers.

Hell is close, is it not?

Say what you must, while he bends over you. Say you are proud, now. No matter if he understands it. In your bloodied clothes, your chest rises. It’s not a dignified death, but it could have been a worthless one. By your own hand, and alone. Robin’s holding you gently.

The pain is white, then black.

*

“Mon petit,” Ghislaine says. She is crouching beside him. She has taken his other hand. Her brown eyes are laughing, and bright with tears. “Ne pleure pas, t’es avec moi maintenant, mon mignon.” She cradles his hand in both of hers. To look at her, you’d think his every finger was a holy relic. You’d think not a knucklebone of him could be lost. “Mon poussin, ne pleure pas,” she whispers, bending over him, her face close to his. She kisses his brow, and her lips are cool and soft.

He paws at his chest, looking for the wound. “Je suis — je suis blessé,” he says, choking over the words. “Maman, Isabelle—”

“Il n’y a plus de blessures.” She brushes her hands over his skin, where it’s uncovered, and he distinctly feels them: they feel like hands, and more than that, like her hands. He remembers her hands so well.

He tries to feel it, to bring it back. What was the last thing I felt, as I lay in Robin’s arms? Yes, it was pain. Already it’s becoming a memory. The hole in his body is not crudely knit; is not patched flesh, stitched by a physician who half-knows his job, snatching men back from the dim edge of death where shadows grow long. Oh no, nothing like that: it is his own, unmarked skin. He thinks, nobody ever struck me. I am simply lying here, in Robin’s arms, as he closes my eyes. As my mother holds my hand.

Tears come, like a flood tide. His mother does not take him away from the body, but kneels beside it, and lets him curl into her arms. It’s a shame to spoil the gown she wears, but too late. There’s no denying grief like this. For all my sins, piled thick and heavy, now. For the blades I sheathed in innocent flesh. He wets her gown with weeping. It would be a sweet thing, to make a better account of myself, now that we meet again. Yet I will not lie to you, Maman.

He doesn’t say the words aloud.

In the end, there is no need to tell her he has not been a good man. I was wrathful, mother. He told me I prayed over much, and so I stopped my prayers, to please him. Mother, I was not chaste, or brave, or just. I fell into the sin of despair. I tried to slay myself, and would not wait upon God’s will.

The words break in his mouth. He wants to say, I tried to be merciful. I gave it to Isabella because I loved her so. I’ve heard the songs they sing of Robin. Lay me a green sod under my head, and another at my feet; and lay my bent bow by my side, which was my music sweet. I would not have given it to her, if I’d known it would come to this. My heart has changed, mother. Please believe me. It was done in mercy.

He cannot speak for tears. Her hands have found their place in his curls again, as if no time had passed. She says, “Je te crois.” Her voice is all the music of the lute’s strings played by a well-taught hand. I haven’t heard it for a long time, he thinks. Only the roaring of the pyre in the still air.

Nobody else has put their arms about him and consoled him, not like this. Others have held him. He’s lain with whores, with Vaisey, with kitchen girls who sought his bed. Marian embraced him once at sea: it was in pity, and he knows that now. And Robin, who would not let him have the death he deserved, but held him as if they were lovers, or truly brothers of the blood. He wants to whisper her name: Maman, Maman. Can she be real? Is it her arms clasping him, as they used to do?

She coaxes him to move away from the body a little. Robin has laid it gently down, disposing it with reverence. How soft his hand, as he placed my arms. No smile: nothing said to mock at me, now I cannot defend myself. It is an intimately familiar thing, and he reaches out to touch the hair, the face, before they edge away. That is my hair. My closed eyes. He’s still ashamed of his wet clothes, the indignity. He begins to stammer an apology, but she says it doesn’t matter. She starts to wipe away the tears from his face. Not the face of the body, but his real face. Nobody has ever been so careful with him. Where did she get such a fine handkerchief? It doesn’t scratch at all. 

Her things were always like that. She was a provident woman.

“Nous attendrons Isabelle,” she says, stroking his hair. She kisses his eyelids as they close, sore with weeping. He sits huddled against her. For now, this will do. It doesn’t matter how long it takes. She is telling him not to be afraid of Isabella. She is saying that Isabella is frightened too.

The taste of blood is gone from his mouth. His grief still sings its wild, slow song within him, but the tears are over. Her hand is passing through his hair without growing weary. The wound is gone, and her arm is about him. He can bear this. He will stay here.

 

 _fin_.

*


End file.
